Changing Individual Performance Reviews

During the Management 3.0 course, Jurgen told a great (and real) story about how one particular group of people despised the traditional performance review process at their Organization.

It’s interesting to know that the intention behind these reviews is to serve the greater good yet they made these people miserable.

My experience is similar, managers have a hard time giving feedback because in some cases they don’t know how to or because they are handcuffed by current policies.

I’m sure there are many more reasons, given my Go Train timebox, I’ll move on.

I’ve been told in the past that “you won’t get a salary increase because you’re at the ceiling of your job description” or “well, I have to put something negative or you can’t possibly improve”

Is there a better way? Well here’s what I tried this week.

I created a 6 question survey:

1) this is what my department does and what I do, is this your expectation?

2) you work with me:

A lot
A little bit
Occasionally
Not at all

2B) do you work in the same department as me?

3) on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you recommend me as an organizational change coach?

4) on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you want to work with me in the future?

5) open comments

For those who noticed, I’m using the Net Promotor Score for whether or not people would recommend me as a coach and co-worker. At the end of the day, if I suck, my Net Promotor score will be low. The survey is anonymous so there’s no safety issue for people to give me brutal feedback.

I sent this to about 45 people from different areas and from people I work with everyday to peers to people outside my department and division that I’ve interacted with and more.

I’m going to share it publicly when the feedback is collected.

It’s important people know what I do, and I’m not talking about a job description that makes no sense, I mean really understand what I do and if I’m any good at it from their perspective.

What do you think about this method of performance reviews? Am I not the best person to define my own performance parameters and to take ownership of my own feedback?